


drinking from a paper cup

by Kieron_ODuibhir



Category: Howl Series - Diana Wynne Jones
Genre: Backstory, Bacon, Canon Compliant, Codependency, Friendship, Gen, narrative foil, porthaven
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-03
Updated: 2020-03-03
Packaged: 2021-02-22 23:10:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23001907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kieron_ODuibhir/pseuds/Kieron_ODuibhir
Summary: It had been no mean feat of magic to shake off a raging Witch—and her curse, he’d felt that get its bearing on him when he’d made his break for it. That was going to turn out nasty eventually.He considered just staying here, and possibly becoming part of the doorstep in time, but the sun had made it over the rooftops now and it was getting in his eyes.
Relationships: Calcifer & Howl Pendragon
Comments: 10
Kudos: 79





	drinking from a paper cup

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sure when I originally wrote this. It wasn't recently. I reworded a few things and broke up some giant paragraphs for your reading pleasure. 😆

Howell Jenkins, somewhat more widely if less intimately known as Wizard Howl Pendragon, collapsed on his own doorstep in the red light of dawn. The feeling of the door against his back, its wandering wood grain, flaking paint, and even the loose nail putting in its dent just beside his spine, was all unspeakably reassuring.

He felt all crumpled up, like a used Kleenex. Handkerchief. Whichever. Handkerchief had to endure being laundered, Kleenex got burnt, or whatever they were doing with unrecyclable paper waste these days. In Wales. Not here. Not quite that civilized here. Still had middens.

Porthaven, despite its trifling lack of Kleenex, seemed to Howl to fit its name perfectly after he had run all night, over what felt like every inch of Ingary, half the Waste, and most of the neighboring nations as well in order to leave the most confused and criss-crossing trail he could possibly manage.

It had been no mean feat of magic to shake off a raging Witch— _and_ her curse, he’d felt that get its bearing on him when he’d made his break for it. That was going to turn out nasty eventually.

He considered just staying here, and possibly becoming part of the doorstep in time, but the sun had made it over the rooftops now and it was getting in his eyes. He reached up and hooked his hand around the latch, pulled down, and let go.

The door swung open, and he fell backward into his front room. “Ow,” he told the mass of spider’s webs obscuring the ceiling.

“What happened?” sizzled Calcifer, leaping up in the grate. For once he didn’t take the opportunity to poke fun at Howl, even though the opening he had been offered couldn’t have been more perfect.

Howl laughed wearily. “Don’t be coy, you old faker. You know everything I know.” He picked the various scattered bits of himself up in a gradual sort of way and slumped over to Calcifer, door swinging closed behind.

The long blue face stared up at him for a moment, then cracked into a display of ferocious green teeth. “I told you she was a bad idea.”

Howl sniffed disconsolately. It was not often that one met a wholly deserved told-you-so, and though he seemed to run into more of them than was strictly probable in a given life, that didn’t mean he’d got used to it. “She seemed like such a sad case, really. And miles more interesting than most girls.”

“The crazy ones usually are,” the demon in the fireplace retorted. Sparks jumped spitting from the log that burned under Calcifer’s face, and scattered across Howl’s shoes.

The wizard winced. Sentence and sparks had provoked his mind to replay very clearly the moment when the Witch had been flaring up in front of him and he had looked at her face and realized quite certainly that not only was she insane, her fire demon was controlling her more than she was controlling herself, and it was more insane yet. The crackling hunger that had risen around it – not unlike Calcifer when he was on a log binge, really, except so much larger and so very much more malignant – had shaken Howl right down to all the squashy organs still firmly lodged in his torso.

Calcifer caught the feeling. Paradoxical as it might have been for a being made of flame to shiver, shiver he did. “Howl,” he said, and didn’t continue. Howl nodded. Calcifer shivered again.

Howl lifted the frying pan from its hook on the chimney. It was probably better to think about breakfast. Dinner hadn’t happened, and neither had lunch, because of that…little set-to. So breakfast it was. He’d left the shopping on the table before he’d gone out, and dropped a preserving spell over it. The outside of the spell was covered in dust now, so instead of dispelling it he lifted it away and the dust with it before he let it collapse on the floor, and slapped a rasher of bacon into the pan. “Calcifer,” he said.

Calcifer looked up. “Oh no you don’t! You leave me alone to sit here and be bored for _weeks_ , and then the moment you come back you expect me to lie down and let you cook _bacon_ on me? What do you think I am?”

“I think you’re the demon in my fireplace, of course,” Howl replied with perfect bemused innocence.

“Pah!” Calcifer flared up rebelliously high, just to show he could. “Try to cook on me when I’m in the chimney!”

Howl sighed. He leaned his left arm, the one not holding the frying pan, on the chimney mantle. “Look, old blueface, we’ve been together a long time, right?”

“Sure,” grumped Calcifer.

“Gotten through a lot of danger together, hardships unnumbered, all that?”

“Most of which were your fault,” the demon pointed out.

“Is it my fault that things are often my fault? Now, Calcifer, don’t be unreasonable. I’ve had a very hard night. I’m footsore, my back is killing me, and my hair is a nightmare. I’ve left doubles of myself running around every national capital within three hundred leagues, and several stretches of countryside. There is a demon back where I came from who probably chews up war elephants and spits out the tusks afterward. I had to hold it off without relying on you at all, so it wouldn’t be able to get your measure. I look and feel like I’ve been dragged through several hedges backward. Is it too much to ask that you let me have a warm breakfast?”

“I’m bent down,” came Calcifer’s muffled voice, cutting into a soliloquy that had nearly reached its end, in any case. “It might do you some good to pay attention when you’re talking.”

“Oh,” Howl said, with as much dignity as he could muster, and placed the frying pan on top of Calcifer. He poked at the bacon with the top of a pencil that happened to be the nearest implement to hand. “You’ll get half anyway,” he said.

“I know,” replied Calcifer from under the pan.

When the bacon was done spitting and was beginning to become just slightly singed, the way Howl liked it, he stood up again and started ferrying scorching crisped bits into his mouth. He was starving. “What about me?” Calcifer protested from the hearth.

Howl used the pencil to send about half the greasy meat tumbling onto Calcifer in a greasy avalanche. “Satisfied?”

“No,” replied Calcifer, before he proceeded happily to consume the lot, with a great deal of noisy gobbling. Howl was again forcibly reminded of the Witch’s demon, screaming greedily out through her eyes. He felt queasy, and put his next piece of bacon back into the pan.

“Calcifer?” he said.

“Yeah?” asked Calcifer, stuffing the last of the bacon down his gullet.

“Let’s not end up like that.”

There was a pause, enough of one for Howl to wonder if Calcifer had taken his comment all wrong, and was thinking about the benefits of running the partnership, or was just miffed that Howl might be accusing him of something, and then, “ _Yeah,_ ” said Calcifer, with an emphatic snap of burning wood.

Howl smiled and overturned the rest of his bacon on Calcifer, and went to the bathroom to freshen up.

**Author's Note:**

> Howl you dumbass, eat food.


End file.
